Political Theology and Ecology

For this symposium, we asked our contributors to reflect on possible points of intersection between ecology and political theology.

For this symposium, we asked our contributors to reflect on possible points of intersection between ecology and political theology. These reflections – the first three of which have emerged from a panel at February’s PoliticalTheology Network Inaugural Conference held at Emory Conference Center – feature a range of views on this topic. In “Climate Apocalypticism”, Tommy Lynch considers the relationship between the current ecological crisis and other political phenomena, and asks about how hope should impact our thinking on this issue. Beatrice Marovich’s “Gaia’s Intrusion in Political Theology” invites us to consider Gaia theory as political theology. In “The End Is Nigh”, Kyle Lambelet reflects on the significance of apocalypticism in current discourse on climate change. Finally, in “Naturalized: White Settler Christianity and the Silence of Earth in Political Theology”, Willis Jenkins urges us to consider the “paganism” of taking seriously ecological relations.

Symposium Essays

There is, I suggest, a kind of political theology at work in this practice of simply paying attention to (and being provoked by) the transcendence that is Gaia. It generates a form of intellectual habitation that remains attuned to the strange shapes drawn in the clouds by some form of transcendence.

What would it mean to take apocalyptic talk as a sign of the times: as revealing, uncovering, and disclosing something basic about the cosmos? Could such talk be the beginnings of an eco-apocalyptic political theology?